Congregation (Catholic)

The English-language term "congregation" in Catholicism is used in three distinct senses, to mean a type of department in the Roman Curia, a type of religious institute, or some groups of Augustinian, Benedictine, and Cistercian houses.

The term "congregation" is used for the highest-ranking departments of the Roman Curia. Lower-ranking departments include pontifical councils, pontifical commissions, tribunals, and offices.

In origin, the congregations were selected groups of cardinals, not the whole College of Cardinals, commissioned to take care of some field of activity that concerned the Holy See. Today, as a result of a decision of the Second Vatican Council, the membership includes diocesan bishops from diverse parts of the world who are not cardinals. Each congregation also has a permanent staff to assist it in dealing with the business that comes before it.

The term "congregation" is used for a type of religious institute. The other major type is the order.

Until the 16th century, the vows taken in any of the religious institutes approved by the Apostolic See were classified as solemn. This was declared by Pope Boniface VIII (1235–1303).

By the constitution Inter cetera of 20 January 1521, Pope Leo X appointed a rule for tertiaries with simple vows. Under this rule, enclosure was optional, enabling non-enclosed followers of the rule to engage in various works of charity not allowed to enclosed religious. In 1566 and 1568, Pope Pius V rejected this class of institute, but they continued to exist and even increased in number. After at first being merely tolerated, they afterwards obtained approval. Their lives were oriented not to the ancient monastic way of life, but more to social service and to evangelization, both in Europe and in mission areas. Their number increased further in the upheavals brought by the French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic invasions of other Catholic countries, depriving thousands of monks and nuns of the income that their communities held because of inheritances and forcing them to find a new way of living their religious life. Only on almost the last day of the 19th century were they officially reckoned as religious, when Pope Leo XIII recognized as religious all men and women who took simple vows in such congregations.

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